(Fahrenheit) 451
I read a book, that reminded me not what to think, but why to think. And I want to write about what I thought about.
I remember the days in the early 2000s, before the internet and modern information technology exploded exponentially in our face. I remember, being an innocent and ignorant child, reading things - books, magazines, novels, whether those deemed useful or those frowned upon for a human of studenting age.
But I also remember reading less and less as time goes on. Some of those time spent reading went to schoolwork, which soon turned into actual work; some of those time went to extracurricular hobbies; and, surely, some more lost to the screen - phones, computers, laptops.
It was normal to me. As technology advances, so does media and content. In my childhood the most luxurious forms of entertainment are movies, television programs, sometimes flash games on random websites scattered across the world wide web; and now we have access to far more - streaming services, recorded and live, interactive programs, as if the entire world is just a few clicks away.
So normal that I did not really recognize that there was indeed something missing, not until I started reading again.
By complete chance, I picked up Fahrenheit 451, a novel by Ray Bradbury. I am a huge fan of Yorushika (ヨルシカ), a (broadly,) J-pop group, who produced a song titled 451 in March of 2023, and I liked the song so much that I decided to look into the origins of the song, the work that inspired the song.
I wouldn’t have guess when I started reading how much I will like Fahrenheit 451. I wouldn’t say that it had a profound influence on me - since the book’s philosophy coincided a lot with mine, albeit coming from different angles - but it made me think about why that is; why did I like reading; why do I read; and why did I stop reading.
Allow me, then, to write about what I thought about, and recommend (Fahrenheit) 451 to you.
Fahrenheit 451 is, broadly speaking, a dystopian story about censorship and free thought. Set in a future in which books are outlawed, and firemen start fire to burn books and houses in which books are found down, instead of preventing them from happening, it tells the story of one such fireman, Guy Montag, who, unfortunately, started thinking on his own and questioned why that is, that people are so afraid of books to the point of outlawing them. It led to a series of tragedies that, without spoiling too much, turned his life upside down, for worse in some sense, and for better in some others.
This is the most I am willing to narrate on the story - despite how cryptic it is. As I’ve alluded to, a major theme of Fahrenheit 451 is the whys as opposed to the hows and whats; why to think, not what to think and how to think. So, I would rather you who read this (good job, you.) understand why I liked it, not what is in the book, so that you can go and give it a read yourself, look at the story from your own perspective, and form your own opinion on the subject. Why you read is a conclusion you should reach on your own. The same will most likely apply to any other book reviews, or whatever media reviews, that I write in the future - if I am ever lunatic enough to do another one of these on a whim.
But one detail that imprinted on me a lot in Fahrenheit 451 is what replaced books in a world in which they are outlawed - parlor walls, in essentiality wall-sized television panels, with a rapid and unending stream of content that feeds cheap, instant entertainment without stop and without fail. The society portrayed is sickeningly indulged in these parlor walls - represented in the book by Montag’s wife Mildred and her friends, to the point that they sink in deep enough to filter out the world outside of these walls, the real world, and the real people around them.
It is the perfect form of entertainment for that society’s short attention spans. Too perfect. You can see where I’m going with this, don’t you?
Science fiction, in particular utopian and dystopian fiction, tells what the author envisions the future is like, and often times, what the author fear that the future is like. Some of them tread more into fantasy (like 2001: A Space Odyssey or maybe The Hunger Games and Fallout), and some are overly pessimistic in their portrayal (such as 1984, and pardon my lack of other examples).
In comparison, Fahrenheit 451, while still considerably fictional, managed to fly dangerously close to the boundary, in particular considering how technology developed and commercialized in the recent years. While (much to my relief) parlor walls are not as widely prevalent as the book protrays - it would be a disastrous trend of interior design - we have accepted an arguably even more effective, and thus dangerous, form of entertainment than walls. Phones, we call it. A piece of screen, entirely localized within your pocket, always within hand’s reach.
What’s more unsettling - our mobile parlor walls started coming with entertainment programs as well. Tiktok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, social media. I’ve documented this (partially) previously in another blog post, but back then, although I was aware how it is influencing us, society, in a bad way, I didn’t really put much thought beyond surface level, on what it has taken away from us.
I suppose I’ve realized what it is after Fahrenheit 451: Thinking, Thought. With the algorithms more and more generating an endless stream of content and entertainment for you, there is less and less need to actually think. ‘Just consume,’ it lures you, ‘just swipe to the next one and consume more. Don’t think, that will slow down the flow (and make us less ad revenue).’ Often those who stand against it will first recognize the monetization model of social media, and understand why things are how they are; swept under the rug is what we lose in the process as human beings, individual minds and souls that ought to think, not consume.
This is a tragedy that I am not exempt from, judging by the amount of social media and livestreaming I spend idle thoughts on. I don’t think I can pull myself away from this fully - not when my sanity depends on them in part - but I hope to be at least conscious of this toxic dependency, and force myself to at least think in the process of consumption.
Good forms of media ought to respond to this expectation, at time of production, even before its arrival to the minds of the recipient. There should be something behind every piece of media - a story, an argument, a philosophy, a thought, a piece of its creator. As vocal as I have been against being taught and told how to think and what to think, there will be no flame if not for the spark.
Generative AI is a much debated technology in the past two years or so - and one I have been very vocally conflicted about, mostly in a negative light. I won’t go to great lengths here about my reasoning and philosophy on art and humanity, but Fahrenheit 451 does add to it on some scale.
What a blissfully simple way to entertain oneself - put a prompt in for near-instant gratification, your ideas and fantasies materialized and concretized with a click of the cursor.
But there is a lack of thought and meaning behind the screen here. No story, no philosophy, just a heap of wires, electronics, abstracted to zeros and ones floating in digital space. A lack of human sincerity, a certain kind of wish to inspire even a sparkle of thought in its recipients - a response good forms of media ought to have.
A discourse from its narrative content, onto the techniques involved. I am a hobbyist writer, vocalizing my thoughts with utmostly unbridled form, without much hint of formal and systematic training. I am content with this - there is no future in which I simultaneously make a living out of writing and enjoy it like I do right now.
Bradbury’s writing, however, is delightfully unhinged and lunatic in some sense, a style that is inspiring me to imitate and follow. An overflowing abundance of metaphors and emotions, confusing and enticing at the same time, hard to emphasize with at once but more pleasing the more you come to understand and expect it. It is a gut feeling, hard to put to words, so I implore you to read it yourself and, hopefully, feel what I felt in my reading.
Although establishing a contrast between physical and digital media, I feel like (and am certain that) Fahrenheit 451 is never meant to be a critique on other, more advanced forms of media. Are movies books? Are video games books? Are ebooks books? People asks these questions, but I think it is more about the spirit, but not the form, of books that makes them books. Quoting and paraphrasing Neil Gaiman, who wrote the introduction to the edition of Fahrenheit 451 that I have,
…I love how broad Ray Bradbury’s definition of a book is, that we should not judge our books by their covers, and that some books exist between covers that come in many shapes and forms, some of them perfectly people-shaped.
I talk a lot about medium. (Perhaps) Unconventional forms of art. Mostly video games as a media for art. The kind of video games that I have loved are almost without exception indie games, that are exquisite in their narrative techniques, and their story that the creators wanted to tell hidden behind that veil of narrative techniques. I find them as valuable as good books, if not more - books that exists between covers encoded by zeroes and ones, floating around in digital space.
But there is a… unique sense of intimacy introduced by physical media between them and the reader. It is the rawest form of distillated message: ink on paper, paint on canvas, processed directly from medium to mind, without the need of some modern technology as a middleman. One can feel a book in more than one ways - the rusty smell of ink; the sensation of sliding your finger across and between parchments; the feeling of progress when you turn one page over another. These the digital media always fail to replicate. A sense of sincerity that we so desire.
A discourse about physical media introduced to me by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, from whom I quote:
Physical media is almost a Fahrenheit 451 (where people memorized entire books and thus became the book they loved) level of responsibility. If you own a great 4K HD, Blu-ray, DVD etc of a film or films you love… you are the custodian of those films for generations to come.
This is in discussion of content streaming services, such as Netflix and Youtube, which, while convenient in many ways, also endangers pieces of literature produced and hosted solely digitally - should the host decides to revoke access and purge its archives, whatever is lost will be lost forever. Recent controversies within the video games industry also echoes del Toro’s concerns, about ownership and purchase and such.
I am reminded of my dad’s movie disc archives - crates and crates of wrapped DVD discs of films, old and new, some more ancient than I am, hidden somewhere in their storage, most likely never to become light that projects onto a screen again. But it still comforts me somehow, knowing that if I really wish so, I can pull them out of the cardboard box, wipe the dust off its cover, and boot up some decade-old drive and watch it again.
Fahrenheit 451 is, at least to my knowledge, oftentimes compared with the staple of dystopian fiction, 1984 by George Orwell, which I’ve also read some time ago. They are quite similar in their shared theme of surveillance and censorship and thought enforcement, and I’ve seen many description of Fahrenheit 451 as ‘Orwellian’.
I find these two pieces of literature very different in the direction that their dystopia came to be, however, and perhaps by proxy, the story that they wanted to tell. 1984 is to me a story about the future if society is manipulated to rid of independent thought and philosophy; Fahrenheit 451 is, in my interpretation, on the contrary, much more about the future if society decided to rid itself of independent thought and philosophy; if society, out of its own collective will, retreated to forms of entertainment that requires less effort. It is much more satire than dystopian. And what makes it brilliant is that Fahrenheit 451 is as much a satire in 2024 as it was in 1953 - if not moreso.
Equally satirical and ironic is the very history of our world, both preceding and succeeding the inception of Fahrenheit 451. I am quickly reminded of the famous tales of Qin Shi Huang, who ‘burned books and executed scholars’, some 2200 years ago; The various censorships of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union; As well as censorships and thought manipulation, whether explicit or implicit, recognized or overshadowed, that is definitely more prevalent than even the doomsayers among us think.
Needless to say, the book itself was subject to many rounds and incidents of censorship, mostly within the United States. The book was apparently banned and burnt in Apartheid South Africa between 1950 and 1970. How ironic.
This concludes about most, if not all, of what I wanted to say about Fahrenheit 451. Taking a step back from that, I did want to also talk briefly about 451, the Yorushika song, and might as well recommend it.
さぁ引火して 燃やして 燃やして 燃やして 燃やして 燃やして 妬けるほど愛して！
さぁ放火して 燃やして 燃やして 燃やして 燃やして 燃やして 飽きるまで愛して
さぁ消費して 踊って 踊って 踊って 踊って 踊って 踊って
さぁ創造して 燃やして 燃やして 燃やして 燃やして 燃やして 燃やして
Now set fire to it, and burn it, and burn it, and burn it, and burn it, and burn it; Love overflows into envy!
Now ignite it, and burn it, and burn it, and burn it, and burn it, and burn it; Love until we’ve had enough;
Now consume it all, and dance, and dance, and dance, and dance, and dance, and dance;
Now create anew, and burn it, and burn it, and burn it, and burn it, and burn it, and burn it down…
A lot of Yorushika’s songs are deeply rooted in literature: 451 included, but also Old Man and the Sea (老人と海), Algernon (アルジャーノン), Matasaburo (又三郎), and, quite overtly, Thoughtcrime (思想犯), all of which I loved dearly. A lot of thoughts were put into the composition.
The (usually) composer of Yorushika, n-buna, produced vocaloid music majorly at the start of his career. Yorushika’s inception was his search for ‘a more human voice in his music’. 451 shines to me, apart from its meaning, also in the fact that it is the only Yorushika song that I know of, that n-buna serves as the main vocal for, in contrast to his usual duties of composition and arrangement, with suis as the vocalist. It feels even more human to me, and I value this dearly.
So, I hope you like it as much as I do.
Feb 27, 2024. Berkeley, California.